


The Queen of Roses

by Spiderheart



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (that's what the archive warning tag is for), Character Study, F/M, Femdoms, Graphic description of semi-period surgery stuff, Male sub positivity, What is she? An Addams, fat positivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiderheart/pseuds/Spiderheart
Summary: Character study of Lady Alerie, through the lens of her husband, rumour, her marriage, and culminating in her reaction to Willas' injury.





	The Queen of Roses

**Author's Note:**

> I was mad about GRRM's treatment of Lady Alerie, and the Tyrell kids had to get their valour and charisma from somebody, and it obviously isn't Mace. 
> 
> I was also sick of the narrative that said Mace was a terrible person for letting his child compete, when GRRM turns around and doesn't have an issue with a sixteen-year-old girl doing an equivalently dangerous thing. As it happens, in fact, sixteen would have made Willas a squire; and squires were expected to take part in jousting, that was perfectly normal in the middle ages and would have been normal up into the Tudor and Elizabethan times as well.

Alerie Tyrell was not much seen, nor heard of, outside Highgarden. Thus, everyone thought of her based upon her husband, Mace, who was not very handsome, nor very gallant, nor very wise. Such a woman as to wed and bed _him_ , went the thinking, was too naïve to know else, or too old or ugly to be able to be discerning.

Any servant in Highgarden would laugh at this. Lady Alerie was far past beautiful—she was unnervingly beautiful, with eyes as green as a winter sea, and hair as black as shadows, that fell thick and heavy, only gaining a streak of pure silver-white as she aged. She kept it showing its length, in complex braids that interwove and fell to her hips, a heavy rope she adorned with fresh roses every morning. She was uncommon tall, and her voice was uncommon low, sounding like it came from a deep well—but it didn’t sound like a man’s voice at all, it still had a woman’s sweetness of tone. Truly white as the finest salt, her skin she kept covered with fine silks dyed darkest of hues, and invented the fashion of wearing hats with very wide brims, decorated with flowers and ribbons, for going out of doors.

As for naïve, there was nothing naïve about Alerie Hightower; it was said she could see into your very deepest secrets, when she looked at you with her piercing gaze. Her very presence was what caused her to be called not the Lady of Roses, but the _Queen_ of Roses. She was every inch a queen, and it was a miracle that she did not ever show interest in the throne, or who sat upon it. It was a strange miracle that she married Mace instead of Robert, when Robert would have gladly had her.

This was both true and the entire point; Robert wanted to _have_ his wife. Mace was perfectly happy letting his wife have _him_. He hung on her every look, leapt to even a hint of desire. If Lady Alerie said ‘jump’, Lord Mace merely inquired how high and in what direction. He was, utterly, in love with her. She was, in turn, very fond of him. She did not mind anything but that he was hale, and obedient. She needed nothing else in a husband, and Mace was not so very ugly after all, he was merely fat. That did not, in Lady Alerie’s opinion (and it was the only opinion that _mattered_ ), make his handsomeness disappear. She rather liked his fatness, it made him warm and comfortable to hold against her, to hold _beneath_ her as she rode him, her gentle dray stallion.

Lady Alerie _luxuriated_ in all of her pregnancies, tall enough and wide-hipped enough that none of them were anything but easy. Indeed, she, like all her foremothers, came to paroxysmic rapture at labour, they were no pains to her.

She spent a great deal of time in the water—she had a pool built in Highgarden specifically for her to soak in, her hair curling in long tendrils through which the fishes would swim, Lady Alerie floating with eyes closed, bare as a babe, thinking. She often said she was _thinking_ when in the water, and could hold her breath so long that more than once it was thought she was drowning, laying on the bottom of the pool, until she stationed a servant specifically to tell others Lady Alerie was merely holding her breath and holding herself under the water, and would come up anon. This led to the rumour, of course, that she could _breathe_ underwater, like a fish, and that there were gills hidden on her ribs. It was not helped by her strange sea-coloured eyes, nor her custom of singing old songs about the sea, work songs meant for rough male chanting made eerie by the slow, melodic voice. She crooned, for her voice was no high and fluting bird’s; but the low and honey-smooth voice of a merling.

Being that Mace Tyrell’s mother, Lady Olenna, was a Redwyne, there were no familial objections to the possibility of marrying a merling. Lord Mace found himself quite shocked, thinking surely that his mother would object to such a perfect woman.

When they married, and were at last in their marital chamber, Lady Alerie undressed slowly, standing up, and not breaking gaze with Mace. She was not blushing, and she was pale as silver, from her generous bosoms to the tips of her long toes.

‘Boy,’ she said, and she dropped the word with all the care of a master tactician, watching his reaction. ‘Come here,’ she said, and pointed to her feet. Mace knelt at once, and was granted the divine gift of her smile, small and secret, hiding mostly in her eyes. ‘Good boy,’ she said, as though he were a hound. ‘Kiss my feet.’

Mace hesitated, not sure he had heard right. ‘My lady?’

‘Kiss my feet,’ she repeated, slowly.

He obeyed, and she smiled a little wider.

‘Good boy.’

Mace had shivered at the power in that low voice, and had thought, as he had when he’d first heard it, that this, surely, was the voice of a goddess. He hung more on her every word, until by the end of that first night, he was ready to die at a word from her, his every nerve, it seemed, inflamed only because it was her desire. He had trailed after her all during their honey-month, fetching and carrying like a servant, hands shaking when she granted him the honour of combing out her hair.

As the years went on, Mace only loved her more and more. He went from a man of the battlefield to a man of the feast hall, and while his mother made remarks, she learned not to make them in front of Alerie. The first time, Alerie reached over and put a wide-splayed hand on Mace’s growing belly, and said, ‘I want your belly grown from good food rather than drink, husband.’

And so Mace had watered his wine more, and had remembered, and somehow, the words from his mother only made him smile—for his wife looked upon his waistline with no despair, but a secret smile in her silver-green eyes.

Once, he went too far into his cups, and made the mistake of expecting her to want him. She took one look at him, and did something she had never done _ever_ before—she _frowned_ at him.

‘You _disobeyed_ me.’

It was so _cutting_ that Mace would bear anything just to never hear it again. He barely took wine at all after that, and switched to tea unless it was the evening meal. He did not mind the japes that he was wife-whipped; he only thought on the pleasure he came to at no hand but hers, the secret desire that she had seen he wanted from the moment she had met him. There was a reason no whore could ever extract coin from Lord Mace’s purse, and it was because his Mistress was also his wife; all he ever asked of them was if this perfume smelled well, or that brooch looked pretty, for he thought to make a gift for his wife, and needed a woman’s opinion. Most whores didn’t mind giving it, knowing what they saw better than the men did.

As her belly swelled with their first child, Lady Alerie’s appetites did not wane—they grew. She floated often in her pool, singing softer songs to her belly, and was often seen walking the gardens at night clad in nothing but her hair and the water trailing off of her. When labour came upon her, it was evening, and she was sitting at table, sipping tea and nibbling at cake, when she quietly put her fork down.

‘I am having a baby,’ she announced, in a quite normal tone, as though she were merely commenting upon the weather. She got up, ‘Maester Lomys, fetch the midwife.’

Maester Lomys only _then_ realised she meant she was starting to _birth_ the baby. She had made not the least particle of noise about pains, and was walking without any wince, nor bracing, merely using her usual stride. The baby came as easily as a dream, and her screams were not accompanied by the weakness of pain, but the strength of pleasure. She demanded her son immediately, and was lucid—but her midwife she had brought with her, and had attended Alerie’s own birth, and knew what women in her family were like. She would have no labour pains, and need little rest. Hightowers always had many children, all of them hale unless the other line brought weakness with them.

Mace did not bring weakness into the line. Every child they had was easy, hale, coming through childhood illness without trouble, coming up strong and rosy-cheeked, plump and happy.

If Mace was a poor father for his tendency to spoil, then Lady Alerie balanced him just well enough, and he let her. Her children were taught firm morals, and disciplined with a firm hand—though never a raised one. Lady Alerie did not need more than a word, to make anyone obey her—even a child in the deep throes of two, six, twelve, or sixteen—the arguably worst ages of childhood.

And through it all, Lady Alerie grew more and more fond of Lord Mace, and he of her. He was no great poet, but he did try; an the trying was really the terribly loving thing about it. The poems got better, because Lord Mace wanted the best for his Queen of Roses; but they were never very beautiful—yet they were _earnest_ , and that counts for so very much more. Everyone hearing his words, spoken carefully, obviously rehearsed, could only sigh behind their fans and remark how _very_ much in love, were their Lord and Lady. A hundred love-stories may have been told more expertly; but none were _real_ , like the Romance of Lady and Lord Tyrell.

.oOo.

When Willas did well with his swordskill, Lord Mace leapt to say he was well enough to compete; and, seeing how carefully Willas heeded his master's words on how to come out of accident alive, Lady Alerie did not disagree. Others might wag their beards and say that they knew Willas should not have; but it was very easy to criticise from that side of the disaster. Willas _had_ been ready, he had trained very well and remembered _every_ skill he had been taught, and Lady Alerie saw how he had kept his head even when the horse was falling, and his foot stuck fast. _She_ had not looked away when everyone else had, _she_ had seen her son make good a possibly fatal situation, and come out of it with only a broken _leg_ , rather than a broken _body_.

She was no mean Chiurg, she was learned in such mysteries as those of human bodies, and moreso than most. She sent away the paltry Maester of the lists as she shrugged out of her overtunic, revealing a strange and sleeveless one beneath, and gone to work with a midwife’s ways—vinegar on Willas’ broken skin, the milk of the poppy and other herbs to hold him down while she saved his life with pain and a knife boiled in a copper pot, and her own good clean viper’s tooth needle, boiled with the knife and filled with something stronger than the milk of the poppy—its distilled power, which numbed Willas as surely as though the leg weren’t there at all, as she stopped the bleeding of his thigh-river with the lining of an egg wrapped around the broken vessel, moved aside his muscle to set the bone with her hands, wrapping it tightly with silken tape. She set the soft to rights later, it was not as important as the bones and the blood.

She lost herself in the bliss of the blood and the gore, taking her time, plying her child’s nerves with more elixir of the poppy when she heard him begin to make noises that were too loud. By the time she was done, there was blood to both of her shoulders, but it was all his own, and so it was fine to touch him with, it was clean to his own body. She doused the outside with vinegar entirely, bandaged it with care, set the outside with more than a splint, binding tight using her own stays, whalebone ripped out and thrown into the boiling water, and woven in with the bandages, to keep anything from moving in any direction.

As she finished, she gradually came from her reverie, became aware of the sounds other than her son’s breathing, other than his heartbeat, other than his voice, which was too loud—she was out of the elixir, and so tipped milk of the poppy down his throat, to damp the pain. ‘You’re safe, Willas,’ she crooned. ‘You’re safe, Mummy’s here, you’re safe, be still, be still as you can. Breathe, that is all I ask of you now, Willas; just breathe. Your body is healing, that is all you feel. You did so well, Willas, I’m so proud of you…’

He calmed at her voice, likely as not only registering it was _her_ voice, not her words; but her words still mattered. ‘Good boy,’ she said, and felt him relax even more, at that, and smiled. ‘Good boy, just try and rest.’ Gods knew she had drugged him enough that he might, an it would be best for him, now.

She was aware someone was yelling outside—had been, she realised, for some time. She got up, blood sticky on her skin, her child laying safe in bed, not too pale, nor too cool or warm. He would live, he had lived through all she’d done, he would live through the rest. Right now, she needed to attend her own health; and she could guess, from the accent, who was outside. She took down her hair, letting him curse and shout at the guards, who were shouting back, in high temper. She undid the braid, little caring if she got blood in her hair—he hair was black, and about to be washed. She wanted to make her first impression, for those were what was remembered best. Her hair shaken loose, she waited for Prince Oberyn to draw breath, before throwing aside the tent flap, and letting him see her, all over blood, her hair catching the breeze, her eyes unflinchingly meeting his, not hesitating, not stopping to look any other part of him over. She needed to see into his eyes, just now, see how drunk he _really_ was.

He was sober as a septon, playing at drunkenness; and it fell away immediately. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. The guards knew better than to try.

He was a good man, a _Dornish_ man; and that meant he understood the _true_ healing mysteries, would know how to protect Willas from the invisible scourges that preyed upon the wounded, would know how to use what was in the tent, would know what the empty syringe meant.

‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I would have someone worthy at his side, while I clean up.’ And she did not wait for the guards—they were House Tyrell guards, they knew the penalty for doing anything but facilitating her will—before going to her family, to the other children, all of whom were sobbing on their father, who was not far from joining them.

‘I have saved him,’ Lady Alerie said simply, and her children and her husband stopped crying, though the other ladies and lords were horrified at the sight of Alerie, her family was not. Little Margaery was holding Loras, and did not stop.

‘Does he still have two legs, Mummy?’ Loras asked, very seriously, surprisingly calm for someone with a single-digit age.

‘Yes,’ Lady Alerie said.

‘You should take a bath, then,’ Margaery said. ‘I shall take care of the boys.’

‘No, Margaery,’ Lady Alerie said, and looked to Mace. ‘Mace, take care of the children.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ he said, finding purpose and will to be composed again; she gave him more of her smile than she usually did, in public.

‘Thank you, husband,’ she said, but he knew what she was really saying:

 _Good boy_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie, the scene where Lady Alerie says "I am having a baby" is from the Addams Family scene. However, it's true that some people orgasm from childbirth, rather than feeling pain--and it's not because they have a pain-kink.
> 
> The distilled elixir of the poppy is meant to be morphine. 
> 
> Yes, she can hear his heartbeat without putting her head against his chest. No, I'm not explaining that.
> 
> * * *
> 
> [Come say hi!](https://discord.gg/Mvygfnn%22)


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